


and a soon to be burned scar

by avosettas



Series: Swapfell: The Bee Edition [1]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Swapfell (Undertale), Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Gen, Manipulation, Physical Abuse, Regicide, Swapfell Alphys (Undertale), Swapfell Sans (Undertale), Swapfell Toriel (Undertale), idk swapfell toriel is Very fucked up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-23
Updated: 2020-11-23
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:42:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27678923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avosettas/pseuds/avosettas
Summary: There is dust on her boots. There is dust working its way between her scales. She is the captain of the army of a tyrant and all she does is hurt and hurt andhurt.
Relationships: Alphys & Sans (Undertale)
Series: Swapfell: The Bee Edition [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2178411
Kudos: 25





	and a soon to be burned scar

**Author's Note:**

> hey remember when i wrote about sf and us sans going grocery shopping? yeah.

There are people starving in the streets. 

Alphys can’t ignore them - that was her, once. Huddled with Bratty and Catty for warmth and begging for scraps or money. Even in this world, it's hard to be cruel.

The Queen is indifferent, though, leading at a pace that would leave Alphys behind quickly if she stopped, and she spares no mind for her starving subjects. To Alphys’s right, Sans’s face is unreadable, though perhaps it’s because she’s on his blind side. Bandages still cover his left eye socket, but the Queen refused to give him time off to rest or heal. 

It figures, Alphys supposes, because the Queen was the one who had destroyed Sans’s eye socket in the first place. 

Alphys hadn’t been there; the Queen had always had a strange liking for Sans, ever since he’d worked his way up in the ranks to her second-in-command. She would request to spend time with him, and him alone. And Sans would do it, because he couldn’t refuse their _queen_ , even if she was sickly sweet to him one day and trying to kill him the next. 

Now, Sans’s face is set in an unreadable grimace - as opposed to his usual scowl, he must still be in pain - and the bandages obscure any idea of his body language Alphys could get from his eye sockets. But she can’t imagine he’s unaffected. Even with what little she knows of Sans’s past, she _does_ know he spent time on the streets. 

“Please, please…” The begging comes from a rabbit, with two children. They've all edged closer to the Queen's procession than the rest of crowd, and of course, they all look like they're near dusting. The Queen stops, and her expression is unreadable when she looks towards the voice, barely reacting to the pleading. Behind her, Alphys and Sans stop as well, and Alphys forces herself to keep her face neutral. The rabbit looks terrified. 

The Queen chuckles. “My, my. Children. Our future.” She turns away, and Alphys can see the sick smile on her face. “Pathetic.” 

Alphys makes a mistake then; as the Queen continues walking, she pulls out a bag of nuts from her pocket. They're not good, or filling - simply a snack for whenever she could escape the Queen's watchful eyes. Even so, the crinkle of the plastic makes the Queen turn once more. 

“Captain,” the Queen says, her harsh gaze turned onto Alphys. 

Alphys does not flinch in the face of it, although she wants to. “My Queen.” 

The Queen’s eyes narrow, and she grabs the bag with little regard for how her ragged claws scrape her captain's scales. Alphys refuses to even wince, despite the blood running down her fingers, and the incremental drop of her HP. 

“Your majesty -” 

Alphys only sees it because Sans can’t stop himself from protesting. ~~She always knew he had a soft heart, no matter how he tried to hide it.~~

The Queen cuts through all three rabbit monsters easily, like a warm knife through cheese. Alphys can see Sans’s whole face now; his single eyelight is shaking in its socket, despite how the rest of his face is held in its practiced scowl. 

The Queen keeps walking. 

Alphys does not sleep that night. She can’t stop seeing the mother rabbit’s wide, pleading eyes. 

~

Sans’s bandages come off, and the Queen goes back to her old tricks. 

Alphys finds them in the Judgement Hall. Sans on the ground, pleading, and the Queen above him. Outside, a cave wind disturbs the stale air. It blows in through the windows, sending the dust coating the floor into little swirling motes, little twisters around Alphys’s boots.

“Ah, Alphys.” 

“My Queen,” Alphys responds, stepping up behind Sans. On the floor, her ~~friend~~ lieutenant looks so small, his ribcage heaving each time he breathes. 

The Queen says nothing for a moment, simply cuts her gaze from Alphys to Sans, with a pleased smile gracing her fangs all the while. As calm as she looks, there's something calculating in her eyes; something full of rage. Alphys waits, feeling the dust settling in her boots. Sans wheezes on the floor, bones rattling slightly. 

Then, the Queen leans down, and grabs Sans’s skull, grinding his face into the tiles. Something cracks, echoing in the empty hall, and Alphys watches as dark marrow stains the golden-yellow tiles, clumping up in the dust. 

Sans makes no noise - or at the very least, none of the sounds he makes are voluntary. He’s too used to it. 

“Do not lose anyone next time, lieutenant,” the Queen says softly. “It would be a shame if we were to lose _you_. Don’t you agree, Alphys?” 

“Yes, my Queen,” Alphys agrees automatically, forcing herself to avoid looking at Sans, coughing on the ground. When he raises his head, dust falls out of his empty eye socket, and his face is so smeared with marrow that Alphys can't tell where it's coming from. 

~ 

A child has just exited the Ruins, Undyne tells her. A _human_ child. 

Their seventh soul. 

Alphys can only sigh over the phone. She knows Sans will take care of this. The stations closest to the Ruins are his jurisdiction, and even if Sans had been called to the capital today, his brother or the dog guards would handle the child in his place. 

So she doesn’t think too much about this child, surely dead, as she sits down later in the day with her flute. Not until Sans calls her. 

“Sans?” 

“I couldn't do it.” The admission is swift and simple.

“...The human is alive?” Alphys says after a moment, having been struck dumb. 

“Yes.” Sans is gritting his teeth, a horrible grinding sound she can hear over the phone. “It's just…” He stops, and Alphys waits. “What are we _doing_ , Alphys?” Sans says finally, softer than usual. “It’s a child.” 

“I know, but the Queen…” Alphys stops. “Stars. Stars.” 

“I don’t think I can hurt a child for _her_ ,” and his voice is venom on the last word. Then, it softens again, and he adds, quieter, “They’re so kind, Alphys.” 

“Do you really think the Queen will stop wanting war on humanity because of _one nice kid_ , Sans?” Alphys asks harshly. She wishes that the Queen would, but they both know she won’t. After all, she blamed her human child, the child she trusted, for her son’s death. Nothing could stop that sort of hatred. 

Suddenly, static arises on the line, and Alphys blinks. “... _This isn’t the sort of conversation you should be having on a monitored network, Al_.”

Undyne. 

“GIVE ME A HEART ATTACK, WHY DON’T YOU!” Sans’ shouts over the line. "Alphys - I will be at your home with Papyrus and the child in two minutes, be ready!"

Over the static, Undyne laughs. “... _Good luck!_...” There are two clicks - one as Sans hangs up, the other as Undyne does. 

~

Chara does not speak, but somehow they worm their way into Alphys’s heart faster than anyone else ever has, except possibly Undyne. 

“...You’re right,” she tells Sans softly as they sit at her kitchen table, watching Papyrus and Chara as they sleep on her couch. “But I don’t… I don’t know what we could do.” Her claws fidget around her mug of tea. 

Sans doesn’t respond, his one eyelight focused on his own mug. “...Do you think she could change?” 

It takes Alphys little time to decide.

(Her left eye, scarred and useless. Sans’s right eye socket, destroyed to the point that he could no longer manifest an eyelight, nor see. Nearly his left eye as well. All the scars on her hands and his face. The games the Queen plays with them, mothering them one day and threatening them and trying to dust them or _worse_ the next.)

“No,” she says bluntly, though she can’t look her ~~friend~~ lieutenant in the eye as she says it. 

Sans nods. His face is blank, though not in the controlled way Alphys usually sees - this is a real blankness, confused and distressed. 

“...Sans?” 

“...When did you stop trusting her?” His voice is almost fragile, and though his face is still blank, his eye light is small and shaking. 

“I don’t think I ever did,” Alphys replies. She knows Sans wouldn't allow it - would probably dust her for trying - but she wants to take him into her arms and not let go. She always forgets how _young_ he is in comparison to herself. 

“...The Queen isn’t always right.” Alphys says when he doesn't respond, placing a clawed hand over Sans’s own gloved one. He tenses slightly, though he doesn’t outright flinch. “Look, I’m not… I don’t know, I’m not gonna ask you to do anything drastic. But at this point…” 

She looks towards Chara, asleep on the couch, covered messily by Papyrus's jacket. Soft and fragile and _a child_. “...at this point I don’t think anyone will benefit if…” She doesn’t say _if the Queen lives_. “...If the Queen wages war on humanity. I joined the Guard to protect _monsters_ , not her.” 

Sans sighs. “I don't know what I did this for. Not anymore.” His eye cuts to his brother, snoring softly, upright on the couch to allow Chara to stretch. “...It was for Papyrus. And that was it.” He laughs a bit, but it doesn’t sound particularly happy to Alphys. “Fuck. I can't believe she… Why the hell would I protect her when it's her fault my life is the way it is? I can't even sleep through the night without waking up in a panic because I think someone is going to attack me.” The words are bitter, but his tone is almost mirthful. Alphys squeezes his hand, and he startles outright this time. 

“She’s manipulative. She'll hurt us if we don’t do as she says,” Alphys offers monotonously, though it was obviously rhetorical. “...She’ll hurt us if we let the child live.” 

“So we make sure that she doesn't,” Sans says matter-of-factually, like it's the most obvious thing in the world. And it is. It’s harsh, but Alphys nods. 

~

They leave Chara and Papyrus with Undyne in Hotland. The elevator ride from the lab to the castle is long and tense. 

New Home is full of dust. The Judgement Hall is worse. But they're used to it - it's their fault, after all. 

Their feet click in unison, muffled only slightly by the accumulated dust. The only other sound is the soft hissing of dusty piles being created and destroyed by the stale winds of the Underground, and the heavy drag of Alphys’s tail. 

Alphys shoulders the door to the throne room open. It’s less a room and more a green house, now, but it smells of decay. Every flower the Queen tries to grow dies, and the sickly sweet smell of rotting petals permeates everything. 

The Queen is tending to a plant in the middle of the floor, her back turned, and in unison Sans and Alphys summon their weapons. 

Sans steps forward, raising his scythe just as the Queen turns, and then he stops and freezes. Even from yards away, holding her position a few feet from the doors, Alphys can see his hands shaking, as he holds the scythe above her, even if the rattling of his bones isn’t quite audible.

The Queen laughs, though nothing is funny. And then she raises a hand, and the flames start. Rapid circles around Alphys, fireballs shaving off her HP by the tens. 

Beside her, Sans is doing poorly - perhaps because the Queen is aiming for him. ~~He always was her favorite plaything, no wonder he'd be so scared to strike her down himself~~. Alphys checks him, quick as she can - 

**SANS**  
**HP 45 - AT 2**  
**It's too bad Toriel knows how quick he can dodge.**

Her LV has given her much more HP than Sans has, even with his own LV, simply because she started out stronger. So she starts firing back at the Queen, despite each ball of fire she sends shaving off fives and tens of Alphys’s HP and leaving the smell of burning skin in the air. 

And soon, Sans lunges, his scythe swinging in a wide arc behind him. 

Time seems to slow, and in that time that’s short and long, Alphys thinks that even though this whole thing went awry… it still went faster than she expected. 

Sans hits his mark, and the Queen collapses. 

Alphys sees the flower as the monarch falls. A single golden flower - the only one she’s ever seen the Queen keep alive. 

”I must admit, I did not,” the Queen coughs, her red eyes tracing slowly towards Alphys. “I did not expect the Captain of my Guard and my best Lieutenant to be the ones to dust me.” Her eyes cut to Sans. They’re hard with malice. “I trusted you."

Sans opens his mouth, but before he can speak, the Queen’s body disintegrates into dust. Her soul remains, bathing the throne room in a pale white light. Then, that shatters as well, and the cave winds from outside blow the dust straight into their legs. 

Neither Sans nor Alphys speaks. Alphys doesn’t comment when she sees the tears falling from Sans’s good eye - it’s not her business. 

And if she’s crying from her own unmarred eye, it’s none of his business, either.


End file.
